It really mystifies me when people say, "I wish Nintendo would release <insert Super NES game here> on Switch Online, don't they realise how much money they could make off that deal?" A, they have groups of market analysts and consultants whose job it is to tell them to do the exact opposite of what the userbase wants. B, you do not need Nintendo Switch Online to play old games. Emulation has been around since the late '90s, and it's so easy to do, I don't understand why everyone isn't doing it. Oh, wait, yes I do. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have dumped millions into campaigns that paint all emulation as malicious software that will hold your computer at gunpoint in exchange for $500,000 in bitcoins. Well, it's not. I mean, yeah, you've got to exercise a modicum of common sense when you're downloading stuff from the internet, but if you know what to look for, the chances of malware infection get reduced to almost nothing.
Emulators, i.e. the software that actually runs the game ROMs or ISOs on your Windows PC, all have project pages that link to github, FOSShub, or SourceForge. Or, if you're feeling uneasy about downloading from SourceForge because you once read an undated article about malware being built into a project file, there's Zophar's Domain as a fallback. You won't ever need to involve the Deep Web (Dark Net, Dark Web, Deep Throat, whatever the police procedurals call it now) in your travels. Indeed, most emulators' project pages are still .com, .net, and .org. There are a few .info's in there now, but everything that emulates consoles from the '80s and '90s are all the original Big 3 TLDs; good news for people who still side-eye links that end in .website or .xyz.
Another thing that might turn standard users off is all the technical options that get dumped on your face on the download page. Win32, Win64, Mac OS X x86-64 or Apple Silicon, Linux, specialised Ubuntu version, come on, come on, we're burnin' daylight here! In this day and age, most people use 64-bit Windows, so that's the option you want to select. Moreover, you want the programme ZIP or 7Z file, you don't need the source code unless you're a programmer who's looking to make changes to the emulator. I mean, can you compile the source code and run the emulator from a nightly build? Yes, but it's a pain in the ass. You're much better off with the Win64 executable. Bigger libraries, like Dolphin, will need to be installed like any other computer application; but most emulators only need to be extracted from their ZIP or 7Z file to some location of drive C. It doesn't even need to be in Program Files-- it can be in your Documents or User folder if you prefer. Once it's installed, run it once to see if it returns any error messages and to let it create config files. If you do get an error message (which tends to happen a lot to new installs of Snes9x, for instance), type the error message into DuckDuckGo and see what comes back. Usually, there's a forum post or a FAQ associated with that emulator that addresses the problem.
The whithertos and whyfors now worked out, you can carry on to finding some games to play. At this point, I would direct your attention to Vault v. Quaid (5th Circuit, 1988), which states that customers are entitled to backup copies of software that they purchased legitimately; and Sega v. Accolade (9th Circuit, 1992), which states that people are able to reverse-engineer a product as long as the work derived from it does not impinge upon the company's ability to capitalise upon their original work.
That was a lot of legalism. What did any of that mean? Well, primarily, it only applies to the United States. But,Vault says, if you bought it, you can download it. Sega says, you can do it if you don't impede the moneymaking abilities of the company. Nintendo alone has a huge, great, cavernous back catalogue of games that are never going to see the light of day ever again. Even if you didn't own a Nintendo 64 and a copy of 007: The World is Not Enough you can still run Mupen64+, download a copy of that game, and use that emulator to play it, and the cops can't arrest you, the FBI can't investigate you, because you're only exercising your rights as an informed customer. I discuss these two court cases in reference to Super NES emulation in greater detail on SuperForeverCom if you're interested.
Keeping this in mind, the No-Intro Collection and Unofficial Redump Hoard are the two best places to find games. Both are curated by dedicated archivists, who place stock condition games in the highest regard; and they are both available on the Internet Archive, the safest place you could ever download a file from. No-Intro deals with game cartridges, game cards, and DLC; while Redump deals with disc media. Nearly every game ever released from 1974-2018 is represented in these two collections. It's on the honour system whether you remain principled and limit yourself to the games you own and the ones that no one is likely to release again, or if you go on a piratey pillage through it, downloading every Mario, Rayman, and James Bond game ever released. You won't find games from the Nintendo Switch, Sony PS5, Xbox One, or Xbox X/S in this archive, mostly for Sega v. Accolade reasons; but everything else, from the Atari 2600 to Zeebo, is all here.
Nintendo are never going to put that game onto Switch Online. Looks like you'll need to get it yourself.
--9 May 2023--